Kinetics of cell-mediated cytotoxicity: Stochastic and deterministic multistage models (Q1061642)

The authors present two approaches to model the reaction between T- lymphocytes and abnormal cells. The first approach is a specialized application of queuing theory. The lymphocytes are the serving units, the target cells are the customers. The lysis of these cells occurs some random time after n lethal hits, delivered by n lymphocytes \((L_ n T\)- conjugates), \(1\leq n\leq 4\), or - another assumption - after forming an L \(T_ n\)-conjugate with \(1\leq n\leq 3\) target cells. The master equations are solved with different initial distributions and were compared with experimental findings. The second approach was a system of linear differential equations for the expected number of cells and conjugates in the different states. The authors define some conditions which guarantee the identity of both approaches.